


Letting (Her) In

by Bloodsbane



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Abstracted Sex, Canon-Typical Spiral Shenanigans, F/F, Kink Meme, The Distortion, Unconventional Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-25
Updated: 2020-01-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:00:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22405342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bloodsbane/pseuds/Bloodsbane
Summary: Melanie is tired of being angry; Helen offers her a way of finding peace. Together, they discover more.---Kink meme prompt fill: Helen/Melanie, where touching Helen's corridors feels like touching her body (if she has one)
Relationships: Helen/Melanie King
Comments: 9
Kudos: 96





	Letting (Her) In

**Author's Note:**

> This was done as a kink meme fill!
> 
> This is my first time writing for either character, so I hope it's alright! This was very different but also a lot of fun to write~ Please enjoy!

**  
**It’s probably a bad idea. It _is_ a bad idea. Melanie knows it’s a stupid, stupid idea, going through the door. It’s Jon-level dumbassary and a part of Melanie hates herself for taking the knob and pushing the door open. **  
**

But another part of her was so _exhausted_. She’d just been so angry lately, and it wouldn’t stop. It scorched her flesh and bone, making her heart beat too quickly, making her blood boil, and it hurt, but it wouldn’t stop. She was so damn tired of being _angry_ , even while she found comfort in the familiarity of the burn. 

And the only time it ever seemed to ease was when she spoke with Helen. Probably some bullshit fear god thing - _whatever_. Melanie didn’t care what it was about the Spiral that kept her fury at bay, so long as it worked, so long as it soothed the awful, itchy flames that seemed to haunt her. 

She hadn’t even needed to mention it, not to Helen. The woman just seemed to know, and had offered, so very casually, to let Melanie take a walk through her hallways. “To calm down,” she’d said, and her voice had echoed between Melanie’s ribs, danced around her racing heart. “If you ever feel… overwhelmed.”

That got a bitter chuckle. Melanie always felt overwhelmed these days. 

So that was it. Just the idea of a minute’s peace, a moment of escapism, that put her hand on the door. It was stupid. She didn’t trust Elias, she didn’t trust Jon, so why in the world did she trust Helen? Why did she trust this door to be a door and not something more, like a mouse trap, like a mouth? 

Even this, the doubt, the conflict, the endless debate in her head, did little more than push Melanie forward. She was just… so _tired_. And Helen’s voice - her promise - was still dancing in her chest. 

The creak of the door followed Melanie in. Honestly, she wasn’t sure exactly what to expect once inside the corridors. Certainly not a simple polka-dot patterned rug stretching infinitely down the hallway, nor the shaded lamps, casting warm light that makes the space somehow… cozy. The walls don’t have wallpaper, but they might be painted- or perhaps the design is carved into the… is it stone? Melanie begins walking, eyes caught on the twisting, swirling shapes. They flow easily and endlessly down the hallway, like vines, like wind or water. 

It distracts her from the ache in her muscles, from her racing heart; Melanie walks silently down the hallway for who knows how long, eyes tracing along with the shapes in the wall. 

At some point, rather abruptly, Melanie realizes she hasn’t seen Helen yet. The woman blinks furiously - swirls live stubbornly in her eyes for a moment, still flowing, curving, bending, intersecting. Once they fade, Melanie cautiously calls out, “Helen? Uh, are you there?”

“I’m here,” says Helen. Her voice is clear, coming from the nearest lamp. Melanie wanders closer to it. When Helen speaks again, her voice comes from below, a spot on the rug: “I am watching you, Melanie. You’ll have to forgive me… I’m not fond of standing in the halls, even now.”

“Oh, yeah, sure,” Melanie responds, trying to sound casual instead of sarcastic. “That makes sense.”

That familiar, amused chuckle makes the lights flicker. “No it doesn’t. Anyway, what do you think?”

“Think of what?”

“It all. How is it?”

Melanie lets herself mull it over as she continues on. It’s difficult to tell how long she’s been walking so far, but it doesn’t really matter, does it? She doesn’t have to worry about that now, keeping track of herself in this weird space… It’s oddly relaxing. She goes on and on, and doesn’t grow tired, and idly her finger reaches out to fiddle with a tassel that hangs from the rim of one lamp shade. “It feels… nice, I guess. You were right, I do feel a lot more calmer in here.”

“Ah… That’s good,” Helen says. Then, “Do that again, please?”

“Huh?”

“Touch the lamp. It felt… Hm. It felt.”

Melanie frowns, but complies, weaving her fingers through the tassels and watching them sway back and forth. For just a moment, Melanie thinks she feels a breeze run through the hallway. “Helen?”

“I can feel that,” Helen says, slowly, curious. “Like… It’s like… Touching. My hair. Fingers in my hair. I’ve never- Well. Helen had hair. Perhaps that’s it.” 

Huh. Well, that’s… interesting. Melanie gives the lamp shade a thoughtful look. The tassels are still swaying, just a bit. “Really? Can you… Can you feel me just walking around?”

“I am aware of you. I am aware of everyone I bring into the door. Most of them… They don’t touch. They run, they stop, they run some more. Some break things. I feel that, but it isn’t like- this. They break from fear; it feeds me; I only feel the feeding. This is something else.”

Melanie begins to walk again, keeping an easy pace. It’s like taking a stroll, she thinks. Once or twice, she and Georgie have gone to the park, just to have a change of scenery while they talk. At the thought of it, Melanie’s eyes are drawn once more to the walls. She thinks of creeping plants and vines overgrown. “Is it a good something else?” There’s a genuine intrigue developing. And the spark of an idea. 

“Can you feel this?” Melanie asks, and runs the tip of one finger along the wall. Just a quick, feather-light touch. 

From somewhere behind her, Helen hums. “Yes, I feel it. Faintly.”

Melanie considers this, and she considers the grooves in the wall, where the designs turn dark and deep, like clay carvings. Pressing her hand flat against the wall, Melanie walks, dragging her palm along, letting her fingers dip into those grooves now and then. She says nothing, and neither does Helen, but the hallway begins to change- just slightly. There’s a sort of… rocking sensation, like Melanie is on the deck of a ship out at sea, so gentle she almost doesn’t notice. The breezy feeling comes back, sending a refreshing chill down across her cheek, down her neck. The wall is warm. 

“I should thank you,” Melanie says, and realizes she’s smiling. It’s… sweet, the feeling of it. It almost hurts; it’s been so long. “Doing this for me - you didn’t have to. Unless you do plan on keeping me here forever and, what, eating me?”

“I… No. No, I won’t be doing that.”

“Awesome. So that means you’re just doing me a nice favor… And that means I can return the favor, yeah? With something nice…” Melanie lets her nails graze along the depths of a swirl in the wall. For one blink of the eye, Melanie swears that the corridor is smaller. “Does this feel nice?”

For a moment, there is no voice. Melanie can feel it, though, feel the presence of something near her - everywhere. It’s watching her, walking along with her, thinking, calculating. Trying to understand itself. 

When Helen speaks, her voice is the warm light, growing nearer as Melanie passes each lamp. “I… I don’t know what this is. The hallway is me, yes. But… I suppose Helen is me, as well. At least, the impression of her. The idea of the form of her body. Physicality, mass. I have no body, but Helen had a body, and so there is a body somewhere; is that where you stand now? I feel it when you touch me, there, but it’s different- I don’t know. This feeling- it- what would you call it? _Tickles?”_

In truth, Melanie doesn’t really follow, though she pays close attention to the tone. Once, as Helen speaks, she fingers the tassels again; the voice falters with the light, a gentle dimming, like the volume turned down, before it is bright again. Like hitched breath. 

Up ahead, there’s a mirror. It hangs to Melanie’s left. The woman takes her hand from the wall and goes over to it. Her reflection isn’t there, replaced with eye-searing smears of green and purple, and the shapes are all too perfect - too _wrong_. Melanie winces, pushing her glasses up to rub at her eyes. When she looks again, there is Helen. 

Helen’s eyes are abstract, empty on the inside, swallowing everything and reflecting it back in the form of fractals. The event horizon of her gaze is a bright, searing red; Melanie tastes strawberries that are too acidic to be strawberries, burning her mouth like pineapple juice. She licks her lips. 

The green and orange and bright, cheery yellow of Helen shifts in the glass. “What are you doing, Melanie? What is it you’re doing to me?”

“For you,” Melanie says, her voice quiet, calm. Every part of her is calm now. She lifts a careful hand and presses the back of her fingers against the glass, so tenderly she wants to cry. She does cry; she does not cry. “I want to- I need.” Pause, breathe, in and out, just breathe. “Let me make you feel good? If I can?” 

“Good?” 

“Yes. I think I can, like this. If you want… I just. I can’t remember the last time.”

Helen doesn’t ask what she means, what hurts. Instead the shape under Melanie’s hand becomes something almost like a cheek, soft and warm. “I admit to being curious. What a strange situation you’ve wandered into, wouldn’t you say Melanie?”

Melanie can only laugh weakly. “Certainly the least awful of the strange situations I’ve been damned to deal with.”

“Now, now, who knows what could happen? Could turn sideways yet; don’t give up hope.” 

That gets a laugh out of her, and Helen laughs alongside, and then she sighs as Melanie kisses her non-reflection. 

Melanie walks. She fingers the creases of the walls, toys with the lamp shades, hums a nameless tune. The carpet laps at her feet like water, tiny waves pushing back against her idle ministrations. Helen doesn’t make much noise; mostly Melanie feels her, making the air more humid or suddenly thin, harder to breathe, or an impossible breeze will toy with her hair and kiss her neck. 

Bit by bit, the hallway curves. It narrows. Soon enough, Melanie walks down a corridor barely wider than the width of her shoulders. She has one hand on each wall, and the carvings have changed. They go deeper, curving into the material of the wall, then breaking away from it in slim sections. Melanie runs her hands into them, along their edges, twisting her body to keep her pace even as both hands begin to fly up and down, criss-crossing, and the walls bend and she bends with them, and it’s like a dance, almost, and Melanie laughs and she can feel the lights falter, flicker, glowing brighter, but they don’t hurt her eyes they just feel warm and safe and Helen is laughing and sighing and moaning like she’s experiencing something so new, like she’s in awe, like she’s really here and the walls press into Melanie and she’s twisting, her arms are weaving and sliding and she is bending, back curved, flowing, easy, calm caressing, content. 

Helen breathes all around her. She is alive, all of everywhere is the swaying, curling, pressing back, guiding, leading, reflecting Melanie back at Melanie to become all of everything everywhere warm and safe and- 

Melanie gasps, and the hallways expand, and Helen is a jagged explosion of pastels blooming somewhere deep and neglected, and Melanie is crying and she is not crying; Helen lets the tears fall where they don’t, does not wipe them away and cradle them in her sharp hands, does not fear the form of them together, dancing, twisting, loving together in a moment that never was. 

Melanie arrives at a door. It is yellow. Helen is there with her, nowhere, not standing behind her, smiling, Helen doesn’t have a face to smile with. The metal of the door shines bronze gold and distorts Melanie’s hand, making it seem too wide and long as she steps back into the cold of Artifact Storage. 

Helen does not kiss her goodbye; she can’t; she does not have a face; she does not have lips. 

Melanie kisses her back and smiles.


End file.
